When women arrive at my clinic, they almost always begin the consultation with the same sentence. “I know what you’re going to say. I just need to eat less.”
After more than 15 years working as a nutritionist, I’ve learnt that this is one of the biggest misconceptions surrounding perimenopause. The women sitting opposite me aren’t lacking motivation; they aren’t lazy, and in most cases they aren’t eating huge portions or living on takeaway food.
Quite the opposite, many are making what they believe are healthy choices every single day, yet they’re exhausted, struggling with weight gain, waking in the middle of the night and wondering why the habits that worked so well in their thirties suddenly seem to have stopped working. It’s hardly surprising they’re confused.
Never before have women had access to so much health information, yet many have never felt more overwhelmed. Every week brings another social media trend promising to “balance hormones”, “boost metabolism” or “beat menopause naturally”.
The irony is that, after working with hundreds of women through perimenopause and menopause, I’ve found that the women who achieve the biggest improvements rarely do anything particularly complicated. They don’t overhaul their entire lives overnight or spend a fortune on wellness products. Instead, they consistently focus on a handful of simple habits that support the physiological changes taking place in midlife.
